The life of an American Family Farm our trails and tribulations and just plain funny moments!

Monday, March 29, 2010

Sale day

This past saturday my grandmother and I headed out to the WV Southern Bull and Heifer test sale where we had 2 heifers and one bull entered. We've been doing this for several years now and honestly I really enjoy it. My grandmother and I in the truck for 3 hours, talking about new calves, potential show animals, who we're gonna use this spring, upcoming sales... it's just plan good management time with no interuptions ( that would be from our better halves that don't know about good cattle managment :p ). I won't lie I'm always nervous during this trip on prices, how our animals are gonna sell. Because we are your non-typical cattle producers, we don't bring a trailer load of bulls to test ( we are heavy on the knife), we raise two breeds( angus and Simmental ), our animals have real names and not just a bunch of numbers, but most important of them all is that it's because we're female. If you can't tell by now I sorta have a chip on my shoulder on that issue.
This trip was no different, nervous and excited I knew we had good animals to sell but we weren't part of the boys club of producers our state has. Which showed it's ugly head in the ring, literally! It just irretates me to no extent how these producer raise cattle on paper and pay no attention the phenotype or disposition when selecting breeding animals. I mean some of these cattle came in the ring ready to eat someone up! Pawing, screaming, trying to jump the fence and some farmer pays $3500 for them! Or the animal has great WDA (weight per Day of Age for you non farmers out there) but structurally are a mess you wonder how the good ol' boy is gonna go out and breed 20 cows this spring? but yet he brings a fortunate because of where he came from and his stats.
Ugh now I'm not saying that these breeders produce nothing but bad cattle, they do raise some really great ones, but seriously people need to get a little heavier on the knife! But my grandmother and I still did well in the sale because we have a reputation for superior mommas with good dispositions and that got us far on this day so thank you to our buyers!
But the greatest part of the day was coming home to a 1st calf heifer that calved out in the field by herself calf's been up and nursed and the heifer cleaned! Those are the kind ya like!